Monday, January 19, 2015

Civility and the Civilized Man

Our friend William Teach, over at The Pirate's Cove has penned an interesting and thought provoking piece this AM on civility. I am going to quote from it extensively, and if he doesn't like it he can just kiss my... (Take a deep breath! Civility! Ommm.) ah, then, we can simply discuss it like gentlemen! Teach writes:

Should
media and other outlets avoid publishing material that upsets others?
Not just Muslims, but the targeted group? We’re not talking about forced
censorship, but personal censorship. Civility. Respect. Responsibility.
In Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein wrote

“A
dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack
of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of
gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

...that
always made quite a bit of sense to me. Too often people are willing to
forgo civility. With free speech comes responsibility. Much of the
world has forgotten this as an attitude that makes everything not just
about “me me me”, but infused with an attitude that everyone else is
simply an ant. What does that mean? Do you think about all the ants and
bugs you step on? No. You almost never notice them. You’re just doing
your own thing without regard to the bugs. This is the way so many
people think today. When they’re driving along and cut people off, it’s
more than just selfishness, it’s a complete lack of regard for what can
happen to other people. The fender bender behind them is of no regard as
they drive off without knowing they are responsible for causing that
accident.

Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
Was it appropriate when cartoonists were penning cartoons portraying
Condi Rice in a horribly racist manner, many which were published in
major American newspapers, such as the Washington Post and NY Times.
When we do, we should be responsible for doing, be it speech, actions,
the pen. We may not be to blame, we we can bear responsibility.

I commented along the lines of: "You
cite the racist portrayal of Condi Rice. Those cartoons were vicious
and meant to demean her. Isn’t there therefore a difference between
those who would use a drawing to ridicule Mohammed as opposed to one
that simply portrays him?

(To the non-Muslim, at least.)"

Is it not civil to
point out something in someone else's religion that you believe is wrong
or in error, or should that topic be off limits? I disagree with
Mormons on matters of theology, but I generally do not air them in
public. During the 2012 election, some liberal trolls (am I being
uncivil in identifying them as such?), mocked Mitt Romney for his "holy
underwear", referring to a practice of Mormonism, yet they had never
leveled any such criticism at Democrat Harry Reid, also a Mormon.

So,
for the case of both Condi and Mitt, the incivility seems to be
primarily partisan in nature. Is partisan incivility exempted from other
norms of civil behavior? Is it fair game to practice incivility towards
one's political opponents? I doubt that the cartoonist or editors for
the Post or NYT would have been so gauche as to mock Condi to her face
or Mitt to his. And the trolls hide in their mother's basement, sniping
at some whose boots they are unfit to lick.

So, how or
where do we draw the line? Coincidentally, I woke up this AM thinking
along these same lines. Am I being too harsh on those I criticize, and
sometimes mock? Michael Moore drew the ire of many on Twitter yesterday,
when he tweeted that Chris Kyle, subject of the movie "American
Sniper", was a coward. Michael Moore is, on his better days, a vile
disgusting human being. Is it not civil to point this out, or is it
merely the degree to which one goes to point it out that might violate
civility?

Moore spoke about an uncle in WWII who was shot by a sniper. And while I did refrain from asking him if his uncle was also his father, I did ask him if his uncle was shot by an American sniper?

The
pudgy, ubiquitous Seth Rogen and a number of other brain dead liberals*
(but I repeat myself) took it upon themselves to try to stretch Godwin's Law and compare American Sniper to the ersatz Nazi propaganda film featured in the movie Inglorious Basterds (sic).

Both
Moore and Rogen have tried to walk back their statements, to little
success, I might add. Michael Moore (Zip Codes 48501-48507, & 48550-
48557)* tweeted:

My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We
were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers
aren't heroes. And invaders r worse

After a little bit of blowback, he tried to claim that he never mentioned Chris Kyle by name, so, his comments were just somehow generic "snipers are cowards" remarks that had nothing
to do with the fact that American Sniper is setting box office records
and is very much in the forefront in the mind of the general public.

Possibly
too, the fact that his fauxumentaries, lying dreck that they were, were
never a fraction of the box office success of American Sniper, would
never cause a noble soul like Moore to be jealous of that success.

Yeah. Right.

Rogen,
whose latest movie by nearly all accounts was dreadful, but generated a
great deal of support across the country nonetheless after an attempted
ban by the North Koreans, gave the following excuse:

I
just said something "kinda reminded" me of something else. I actually
liked American Sniper. It just reminded me of the Tarantino scene.

To which I replied:

If the critics say your movies remind them of dog vomit, then, they're not actually comparing, right? Just reminded. Right.

I also posed the question over at Pirate's Cove:

Should
I self censor if what I write or draw offends a certain group? Do we
extend this courtesy to skinheads, 9-11 truthers and the KKK, or is it
merely religion that we exempt?

Does anyone get a
free ride? Liberals gave liberal Mormons a free ride, but not
conservative Mormons. A commenter at PC posited out that 'Islam is not
an "evolved" religion', bringing up the point are the less informed
or benighted among us free from civility? May we mock headhunters, but
not Presbyterians? Radical Islamists but not moderate Muslims? People who are mistaken or downright entrenched in their ignorance??

In a polite society, is it ever correct to be intentionally rude? Even if someone, in your humble opinion deserves it?

Someone once said of George Bush (and obliquely of Barack Obama), that Bush never unintentionally insulted the Europeans.

Consider
too, the latest Papal dispensation to civility. Pope Francis responded
to the Paris slaughter by suggesting that "if someone curses your
mother, he should expect to be punched".

Well, I
realize that the whole "turn the other cheek" thing is so 33 AD, still
do we get a "one free punch" exception to civility, like the "one free
grope" rule given to Bill Clinton to shield him from sexual harassment
laws?

I realize this post raises more questions than it
answers. I've got a couple of Photoshops coming up on Wednesday and
Thursday AM this week. The first is rather tame, mocking the current
administration (in quite a clever way, I might add!), but the second,
Thursday's, is a little more biting, directed solely at the President.
Let me know if you think I'm being less than civil.

BTW, anything in my blog I am more than willing to tell to the face of subjects of these posts.

Even Thursday's...

Addendum: (Not so much an update as something I meant to reference earlier when I was rudely interrupted by work.)Last week after Andrew Roman's excellent Before You Argue the Point, Know Your Bible First
post, we had a brief discussion about how people forfeit their rights,
and that capital punishment was in no way was inconsistent with a
pro-life viewpoint. Just as one can love liberty and favor people
forfeiting their liberty through any number of acts, one can be pro life
and favor capital punishment for those who forfeit their own right to
life by unjustly taking the life of another. Which got me to thinking,
in this context, do people such as Moore and Rogen (And Obama, and
Biden, etc. etc.) forfeit their right to civility by being less than
civil? By lying or being duplicitous?/ By being snot-nosed, lying
crapweasels*???

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